In July of 2023, four months into UAW President Shawn Fain's first term, the UAW's Public Review Board ruled on an appeal by retired UAW member Frank Goeddeke that the UAW must release all minutes of its International Executive Board (IEB) meetings.
Under the UAW's constitution, the union is required to release the meeting minutes after they have been reviewed by the UAW President's office, the legal office, and the Secretary-Treasurer's office.
However, for nearly two years, the UAW under President Shawn Fain has resisted releasing the minutes. (Ironically, Shawn Fain's Chief of Staff Chris Brooks, who made his name writing for Labor Notes about controversial scoops from UAW meeting minutes, refused to release them.)
Then, in early April, Payday Report published an article that exposed the UAW's failure to release the meeting minutes. The article caused outrage among the UAW rank-and-file.
Now, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock has written to the UAW's Public Review Board and informed them that she intends to unilaterally release the meeting minutes without the approval of UAW President Shawn Fainn.
"In accordance with these actions taken pursuant to my Constitutional authority, I have today distributed previously undistributed IEB minutes to all IEB members," Mock wrote in a letter obtained by Payday Report. "Starting today, I will also begin making available to UAW members in good standing previously undistributed IEB minutes beginning with those of the IEB meeting held in November 2023."
It's unclear whether Shawn Fain will follow suit and instruct the Regional Director to release the meeting minutes. Under the UAW constitution, regional directors are supposed to make the meeting minutes of all UAW Executive Board meetings available to their members.
The move by Mock to release the minutes comes during a high-profile dispute between Mock and Fain.
Currently, the UAW's court-appointed federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, is investigating the decision of the UAW International Executive Board to demote Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock in February 2024.
Just two years earlier, Fain, a white guy from rural Indiana, had tapped Mock, a Black autoworker from Detroit, to be his running mate. During the campaign, incumbent UAW President Ray Curry, a Black man from North Carolina, made an issue of Fain being white.
Mock's inclusion as a Black woman undoubtedly helped Fain's ticket win narrowly, with only 483 votes cast out of 136,485 votes from the UAW's rank-and-file.
Many UAW members have been wondering why Mock was demoted. Fain and his allies have claimed that Mock engaged in financial impropriety. At the same time, Mock says she was removed because she began asking tough questions about UAW spending priorities.
"When policies are established by the UAW International Executive Board, and/or by the special monitor ordered by the court to oversee the UAW, and/or by federal agencies, it is my responsibility when these policies concern UAW finances to diligently make sure these policies are adhered to," Mock said in a statement to the Detroit Free Press. "While it saddens me even further that I get criticized, attacked and retaliated against because I insist on the policies that are in place be adhered to, I will not waver in enforcing financial policies intended to protect our members' sacred dues dollars."
(For more on the scandal, check out Payday's 6,000-word investigation "UAW Federal Monitor Investigates Fain's Purge of Top Allies While Convicted Felon Steers UAW Legal.")
To reassure union members, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), which backed Fain and Mock for election as Secretary-Treasurer in 2023, countered in a Facebook post that members who doubt the accusations against Mock should request the full minutes of the UAW's International Executive Board meeting last week.
However, the UAW would not release the IEB meeting minutes, denying union members the ability to read the very meeting minutes that UAWD supporters have cited as evidence of Mock's financial impropriety. (Last week, the UAWD caucus disbanded under pressure from UAW President Shawn Fain)
Now, Frank Goeddeke says that he is going to go down to Solidarity House and read the UAW meeting minutes himself. He intends to let other union members and the press know what he discovers.
"It's a delayed step forward," says Goeddeke. "I mean, this step forward should have happened two years ago."
